Caves and Rockshelters (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gilliane Monnier. Gilbert Tostevin. Goran Pajovic. Mile Bakovic. Nikola Borovinic.

This is an abstract from the "The Late Middle Paleolithic in the Western Balkans: Results from Recent Excavations at Crvena Stijena, Montenegro" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The excavations at Crvena Stijena from 2017–2022 have had two main objectives. The first is to test the Sandgathe/Dibble hypothesis that Neanderthals did not have the ability to make fire; rather, they were dependent on natural occurrences of fire. The testable implication...

DOCUMENT Full-Text César Méndez. Amalia Nuevo-Delaunay.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The early Holocene archaeological record in Patagonia has always been elusive. It is often recorded as layers within multi-component cave sites where archaeological and natural materials accumulate. However ordered the layering, careful the excavation techniques, or large the quantity of radiocarbon dates, such sites are complex to interpret due to site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pamela Allan. Moira McMenemy. Kelly Brown. Matthew Baker. David Robinson.

For decades, debates have raged over the role of trance in the origination of rock-art. However, there remains almost no direct evidence of the ingestion of trance inducing material at any rock art site world-wide. The site of Pinwheel Cave has a large element thought to represent the opening of the flowering Datura. Dozens of quid, or 'chews' - i.e. masticated fibres of unidentified plant material - are found within the ceiling of the cave. A sample of this was taken and analysed to determine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Nicolay. Margaret Berrier.

This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Indigenous Culture and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Claims for contact between Mesoamerica and the U.S. Southwest predate by centuries the inception of archaeology as a scientific discipline. However, despite such long-standing assumptions and the accumulation of evidence from the archaeological record, including ball courts, copper crotals, cacao, and macaws, as well as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bradley Russell. Stanley Serafin. Eunice Uc Gonzalez. Carlos Peraza Lope.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With support from The National Geographic Society and The Waitt Foundation, the Mayapán Taboo Cenote Project conducted investigations at Cenote Sac Uayum, a sacred, water-bearing sinkhole located at the Postclassic Maya political capital of Mayapán, Yucatán, Mexico (AD 1150-1450). The work brought together an international collaboration of researchers from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Nicolas.

Caves are natural spaces, but like other natural settings, they can be perceived by people through highly variable cultural lenses. Caves are not generally used as utilitarian spaces, but are more often sacred spaces where rituals are performed. The material record of these subterranean features can provide insights for how past peoples connected to the symbolic landscapes of caves, thus affording opportunities to assess behaviors. Research on the ritual uses of caves is fairly new in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Agni Prijatelj.

Caves are regularly portrayed as a blank stage upon which the social – including ritual activity – is enacted. This paper, however, takes the opposite approach: in discussing a number of selected Antique and Medieval ritual cave sites in Slovenia that are associated with Roman, Christian and Slavic religious systems, it demonstrates the vibrant, hybrid, participant and continuously-changing nature of underground places in which multiple symmetric and fluid connections exist between people,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Lippiello.

Shared iconography and similar functionality associated with dated depictions of Predynastic watercraft and terrestrial shrines identify watercraft as the earliest manifestation of manufactured sacred space in Egypt. The resulting Mobile Sacred Space Paradigm describes watercraft as ritual objects (liminal negotiators) empowered to move through and, thereby, connect three ecologically distinctive landscapes as early as the Naqada IIB Period (and possibly Naqada IC). Results indicate that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gerardo Gutiérrez. Mary E. Pye.

In this paper, we address the role of leaders and their communities during the performance of ceremonies associated with rain petition in a network of caves located in the Mixtec-Tlapanec-Nahua region of Eastern Guerrero. We present newly discovered archaeological evidence in the caves of Pozo de Muerto, Casa de la Lluvia, Cauadzidziqui, Juxtlahuaca and Gobernadores de Techan, as well as ethnographic analogy to shed new light on the use of caves as arenas of ritual and political performance from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Willis. Myles Miller.

This is an abstract from the "The Art and Archaeology of the West: Papers in Honor of Lawrence L. Loendorf" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The creation of rock art imagery often involved more than pigments, incisions, and peckings. The natural form of the rock influenced, completed, and enhanced pictographic and petroglyphic shapes and often informed the placement of certain designs. Presenting the complex interactions of natural and human-made...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimberly Zhu. Guillermo ae Anda.

This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is so widely accepted that the Maya burned copal incense in their rituals that the assumption has gone unquestioned. During the 2018 season, the Gran Acuífero Maya Project began a multi-year investigation of the cave of Balamku near Chichen Itza. The cave contains a large number of incense burners filled with burned material that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Kessler. Greg Hodgins. Matthew Guebard. Lucas Hoedl.

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most radiocarbon measurements informing Bayesian models of cultural sequences are obtained from short-lived organisms such as annual plants and animal bone. Short-lived organic material from plateaus in atmospheric 14C production have a calibrated error that corresponds to the duration of the plateau. This fact hinders Bayesian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gavin Wisner.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster provides an analysis of faunal materials from mixed deposits in both the Caves Branch Rockshelter (CBR) and Sapodilla Rockshelter (SDR) in Central Belize. This analysis continues previous research at the two sites from contexts spanning the Protoclassic to Terminal Classic temporal periods concerning ancient Maya ritual and mortuary behaviors. The...